Blessed with Suck

Edit Locked

"And as he drove on, the rain clouds dragged down the sky after him for, though he did not know it, Rob McKenna was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him and to water him."

Example Subpages

Other Examples:

Comic Strips

In a Dilbertstrip, Dilbert's mother is visiting a psychic, but forgot her purse and thus couldn't pay. The psychic puts "The Curse of Competence" on her firstborn son, prompting Dilbert's mother to wonder why that would be a bad thing. As Dilbert (her firstborn son) finds out, when you're the only competent person in a world full of idiots, you'll be the one everyone asks to make things work.

In Peanuts, Frieda viewed her "naturally curly hair" as a drawback, claiming that everyone she met was envious of and generally disliked her for it. Lucy once shut her down with a blunt "Don't kid yourself, sister."

Hades has all kinds of incredible powers—he can easily control flame, never ages, and possesses immortality. Unfortunately, he's been assigned a job that he hates—dealing with dead people all day—while the other gods get to spend their days on the sunny Mount Olympus. Because of the nature of the job (there's always someone new dying), he's stuck in the Underworld and never gets a break.

Hercules himself has Super Strength. Yay! But that Super Strengthnever turns off, and when combined with the natural klutziness of a teenager, it leads to pretty much everyone in his hometown hating him (they outright call him a freak). Plus, he's a god among men and doesn't know it, so he spends his entire childhood/teenage years feeling like he doesn't fit in with other humans.

Meg has apparently been granted immortality and eternal youth by a god. Trouble is, that god is Hades. And she only gained her powers by making a Deal with the Devil—she sold her soul to save her boyfriend's life, and he repaid her by running off with another woman. She's now has to do whatever Hades tells her, and as a result, doesn't seem to have any friends or people she's close to.

Rapunzel of Tangled. Oh sure, it's awesome to have hair that glows and heals any wound and reverses aging, but when you get kidnapped from your birth parents, and said hair grows 3 times as fast as regular hair, there are problems that can arise. For instance, it apparently takes 3 hours to brush her hair, and 6 hours to wash it. And with 70 feet of it by the time you're 18, it can also be a real drag (literally) to lug around. And yes, you could braid it to make walking easier, but then if it catches on anything, you're stuck.

In the same movie, Vanellope has the power to teleport, which is incredibly handy in a racing game like Sugar Rush. But she has it because she's a "glitch"—that is, the video game code that she's made of is inherently corrupted. Everyone treats her like dirt for her condition, even though it makes her one of the best racers in the game. It turns out this Fantastic Racism is something of an Enforced Trope: When King Candy/Turbo took over the game, he reprogrammed its code to make everyone forget that Vanellope was actually the princess of the realm. When Turbo's defeated and Sugar Rush restored to its former state, the population's memories are restored as well, and they welcome Vanellope back with open arms, despite her glitch.

Elsa in Frozen considers her powers this until she learns to control them. Having powers over ice and snow is cool. Nearly killing your little sister when you are both just children and years later accidentally putting your whole kingdom in eternal winter due to Power Incontinence is not.

Moses from The Prince of Egypt is God's Chosen One, but he is forced to be the instrument of the 10 Plagues of Egypt. This pits him against his once beloved brother and old home, and he's very unhappy to have to bring destruction in God's behalf to a place he once loved and getting entirely innocent people in the crossfire.

Think being the leader of a town and having everyone in said town admire you would be utterly awesome? Try telling that to Jack Skellington, who is the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town. However, it's always about Halloween, every single day, which is problematic when you want something different. Taking a break is not an option, as shown when Jack disappears for only two days, everyone is in a panic. Also, Jack seems to not be able to give the crown to anyone else if he wanted ("But who here would ever understand/That the Pumpkin King with the skeleton grin/Would tire of his crown, if they only understood/He'd give it all up if he only could . . . "), so he's stuck with the job. And if the scenes after "This Is Halloween" is any indication, due to being the biggest in-universe celebrity, Jack can't even have a decent conversation with anyone. And who knows how long Jack's been doing the Halloween job? He could be Really 700 Years Old for all we know. When you think about it, you can't blame the guy for desperately wanting to try out Christmas. But because he's still the Pumpkin King, he can't escape Halloween even when he's trying to be Santa Claus. The result? Some very dangerous toys.

Music

Jim's Big Ego's song, the Ballad of Barry Allen, explores the logical consequences of perceiving time as a speedster and the loneliness and boredom that comes with being the fastest man alive.

Web Animation

In Red vs. Blue, Simmons talks about terrible superpowers: the ability to fly, but only north, and being able to teleport only one foot at a time.

Just how pervasive is this trope? Well, on Homestar Runner, Strong Bad got an email asking what he would do if he had the ability to transform. Strong Bad immediately assumes that he'd have to somehow be Blessed With Suck:

Strong Bad: If comic books, cartoons, and Sci-Fi Original Movies have taught me anything, it's that shapeshifting comes with a bunch of boring rules and restrictions that limit its potential Turn-Into-A-Bulldozer-Whenever-I-Wantity. You can turn into a machine gun but not bullets, contemporary jazz turns you back to normal, you can only turn into presents your grandma's knitted for you. Crap like that. For example, let's say I could turn into any species... OF BALLOON ANIMAL!!??

In RWBY, everyone's got a Semblance, a special power that only they can do (super speed, creating illusions, etc). However, it's later established that not all Semblances are cool and useful: your Semblance can be, for instance, to cause misfortune to the people around you. The character in question, Ruby and Yang's uncle Qrow Branwen, does note that it can be useful when in a fight because it causes bad luck for their opponent, but it also means that they have to keep away from family and friends.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy